Hurt
by wrestlefan4
Summary: Jeff Hardy song fic based on the lyrics of the song "Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails and/or Johnny Cash. More of a summary inside. One-shot.


**One-shot major angst with Jeff. The song is "Hurt" it is done by Nine Inch Nails and Johnny Cash. I'm not sure who wrote it or whatever I'm thinking Cash but don't quote me. WARNING this is very sad and deals with drugs, cutting, and suicide, and character death…Jeff? Maybe. I would like you to read anyway because I spent a lot of time trying to make it right and put a lot of effort into it but I completely understand if people find it too hard to read. Just remember it's a fic. I don't want anything bad to happen to the character it's just the song is really sad in itself so the fic has to match it. So, on with it. Song lyrics are bold and italic, thoughts are italic. Just to lessen any confusion. :) And I did tweak the song just a wee bit but not much. Just to let ya know.  
**

**Hurt**

The air was tepid and wet as Jeff stepped out of the shower. He had stood under the showerhead until the hot water ran icy, staring down at his pale feet, just watching as the water ran between his toes carrying a stray strand of colorful hair here and there and catching the fallen filament in the pin holes of the rusted drain. Where does it all go?

He watched now as the tiles he stood on collected puddles of water from the liquid that dripped down his skin. It rolled off like rain from a bleak watercolor sky. Sighing he ran his hand through his hair and over his tiger-like beard, frowning with his eyebrows when his fingertips felt the familiar features of that face, but failed to recognize what lay behind it. Swallowing hard to keep from tears he dragged his feet from here to there and leaned on the vanity peering at the white fog that hung, condensed onto the mirror, a shield from seeing his lost reflection. Palm squeaking against glass soon made it clear enough to see the hollow depths of olive eyes, the slight curve of unhappy lips, and the rise and fall of the Adam's apple as he swallowed away his tears again.

He found the drawer and pulled it opened and didn't even glance down to find what he desired. His eyes kept steady to the ones reflected back at him, a void looking into a void, the end a point unknown. When he grasped the familiar plastic his hands began to tremble knowing that they were going to mutiny from the rest of the body, turn cannibalistic, and eat it s host alive. He broke and cracked the plastic casing until the seed of pain was revealed glistening with light along the edge that was hungry to bite.

He pressed the fiend to his flesh, hissing breath drawn inward over teeth, at the coolness of metal against dewy, tattooed, skin. Harder, and a bead of red welled up.

_**I hurt myself today  
To see if I still feel  
**_

His eyes clenched shut finally breaking off the trance-like stare. He put his attention on the sting of the blade as he sliced and carved the unique pores of crimson through which his depression would momentarily fly. Some lay shallow and others deep, some wept freely while others barely bled. Some were small like needle pricks and some were wide like gaping mouths, screaming themselves raw. He watched as he had earlier as liquid fled, leaking between his fingers and dyeing the sink before dripping down the drain and painting the innards of the pipes. It felt so good to feel something physical, something palpable, instead of internal whispers and screams.

_**I focus on the pain  
The only thing that's real **_

Time passes waving goodbye to memories but never really forgetting them, reminding with the scars. It laughs as it travels on adding more and more of its eternal branding. The ticking hands of the clock are razors and the sands of the hourglass tears. Things might fade to grey, but always, they always stay. Happiness is not even an option, just pain to drown out the demons, just numbness to silence their cries.

Finding himself with down time again he sat at the end of his bed, alone as he always was. He cast his gaze to the object lying on the bed next to him, on the white pillow, like an angel on a cloud. He knew he shouldn't do it but that didn't matter. There was no price he wouldn't pay to escape for even a short period of time. Tripping was better than falling. He took the instrument of destruction—they were so easy to find—and pressed the scorpion stinger into a needy vein. Soon the poison would course through his body and shut down the things he couldn't blot out on his own.

_**The needle tears a hole  
The old familiar sting**_

How long he was gone he couldn't know. He didn't see the point in looking at the time. On the bed he lay cold in a sweat shuddering as he rose from the depths of the drug back to whatever reality he was trapped in. His nails found his skin and scratched tearing old scars apart, drawing them back he stared at the pink crescents under his chipped black nails.

The thing that had been kept subdued in an altered state filtered through the holes in the curtain of his mind, like fingers of darkness, rather than warm rays of sun. He pressed his palms into his eyes so hard that bursts of color exploded and they ached. All he wanted was not to see but he could neither blind his inner eyes nor gouge out the haunts that plagued them.

_**Try to kill it all away  
But I remember everything**_

Jeff picked up the plastic corpse next to him, the body that had been home to a fleeting, opiate, life. He held it lovingly as though clutching the hand of a dear friend. He wanted comfort so desperately but he had no one to call, he had burned all his bridges and turned help away. The only person left was Matt and he was too ashamed to reach for his brother. So many times he had failed his sibling, so many times he had promised, and he had broken them all. The wounded look of his brothers dark eyes was enough to break his heart—both of their hearts. None of it was worth it. He knew he couldn't do it again. Clutching the emptiness tighter, he wept, mourning the loss.

_**What have I become  
My sweetest friend**_

_**Everyone I know goes away  
In the end  
And you could have it all  
My empire of dirt  
I will let you down  
I will make you hurt  
**_  
On the plane going to nowhere he pressed his fingers against the window. As the aircraft touched down to tarmac he could see the people milling. Once in the airport some of the tiny ant-like bipeds might see him, some might even recognize and admire the sign around his neck or the trademark streaks of his hair. Dragging himself off of the plane never hearing any words of those around him or seeing their eyes flash with concern he exited and pulled his suitcase, his identity in a bag, behind him and disappeared—well not really—into the crowd.

People whispered with hushed excited voices when they recognized, some pointed and others—females—screamed and fanned their teary hot faces. A few rushed up to gush and thrust pen and paper into hands trembling from withdrawal again. Some even scooted close for photos and he wondered if when they checked the results on their tiny screen would they see the pain in his eyes or just their favorite obsession?

Sometimes it scared him how much people could adore him, a man they didn't even know. He was still in wonder when they crowded arenas and lined up at tables wearing Hardy merchandise, dyed hair, and neon arm socks. He was the Hardy they wanted to see, a man who could risk and dare and defy all the boundaries they set for themselves. They crowned him their hero and surfed the web to discover his life and squeal.

"Jeff, are you okay?" A voice of someone he worked with—he didn't even know who—questioned him and he nodded the way he always did confirming his flimsy deceit.

_**I wear this crown of shit  
Upon my liar's chair  
**_

Room numbers changed, the faces in the crowd moved on, the signs they held spelled different things, but nothing he could read. The storylines and matches all shattered and realigned becoming one confusion like the pieces of his life. Past and present mingled and pricked the scabs of a wounded soul, raving thoughts swooped down like vultures, to pick over the shredded carrion of sanity, and the darkness swallowed deeper.

_**Full of broken thoughts  
I cannot repair **_

Blood stained razors slit out the pain. Crimson fingers scratched out the high. Tears washed over pallid cheeks baptizing them with despair. Beside the bed on someone elses table, in a place he didn't know, the little scarlet numbers announce time still slips away, a second never changed._**  
**_

_**Beneath the stains of time  
The feelings still appear**_

People told him he had changed but would they really know? None of them took the time to notice until he was on his knees in shame. One more and you're out you better try hard to clean up. How easy the words are, how deep the stains. The call came on a weekend, the voice sounded dour. Pulling on a sweatshirt to hide his self-inflicted deeds he dragged his feet to Stamford, the boss demanded a meeting. The enigma could not bear to meet the gaze of his employer, his eyes hit the carpet and the scuffed toes of his shoes. Feeling like cement was tacked to the soles he stepped forward and imagined Vince at his desk wearing the black robe of a judge. The judge cleared his throat and the offender pulled his eyes so slightly upwards finding fingers tapping papers on the desk. He knew without words that he was damned and he vaguely wondered if this is how it will be in the afterlife, if there is such a thing.

"I don't know who you are anymore." The voice said shoving the test results forward. Jeff didn't look, just asked to sign the papers and be on his way as tears and snot made his face into a puddle. "I don't know Jeff. I don't know who you are anymore."

He stood in the hallway alone and wondered if it was Vince who had said those words, or if he said them to himself.

_**I am someone else  
And no one else is here**_

He somehow knew it was coming. If his career crumbled away then he truly had nothing and it was all getting so fucking unbearable. But he had prepared an answer. He had bought that answer somewhere after his arrival on the list of 'future endeavors' and before making it back to the hotel. He fell back into his hotel room feeling like a monkey in a cage, confined, claustrophobic, at least escape was near. Anger overwhelmed him at himself and everyone else. Battered arms swept lamps from tables bulbs burst with electrical pops, shades jarring sideways. The TV went next going kamikaze out the window and falling to pieces below, the appliance turned bomb.

The blinds were pulled away and bent and mangled, the door was punched leaving splinters in swollen knuckles, the clothes from his suitcase and the pages from his sketchbook littered the floor like carnage after a mini-hurricane. Shitty wallpaper came torn from the wall and the old paste from beneath wedged tight under frayed fingernails as they scraped away at the wallpaper then turned to more human substance. It didn't matter anymore, none of it did. Soon there would be nothing left.

He stopped his tirade and leaned against the dresser and looked down at its toppled twin. His breath came ragged and wild and felt like fire dancing in his chest. His body wracked with quaking howls of grief and intermittent bursts of confused and thankful laughter. Palming tears from his eyes Jeff stumbled to the middle of the room and reached into his pocket. It fit perfectly in his hand. It was his only friend.

_**What have I become  
My sweetest friend  
Everyone I know goes away  
In the end  
And you could have it all  
My empire of dirt  
I will let you down  
I will make you hurt  
**_

When Matt got the phone call from Vince his heart jumped into his throat. He knew he had to find Jeff and quick. He was staying at some seedy motel having squandered a lot of his money on things he thought he had to have. Matt had offered for Jeff to stay with him but his depleted brother just brushed him off and walked away like a husk of someone Matt had once known. He couldn't stand the waves of pain his brother emitted on a daily basis. Being around Jeff felt like a constant heartbreak, but it was something Matt would gladly bear if he could help, if he could.

His nerves were on edge, tension creased his features, he found a wrinkled woman at the desk and she gave him the room number of his brother. His heart hammering with fear in his chest Matt hurried to the elevator and found it out of order. Cursing he jogged to the stairs, his fright rising for no apparent reason, he took the steps two at a time panting. By the time he was on the third level he was sure he was going to scream. He imagined the worst, and prayed it was a lie. Matt ran.

Jeff rested the nose of the gun against his head. He hitched with sobs as his finger gripped the trigger, caressed it like a lover. He closed his eyes and saw the darkness enfold him and wondered if he would wake to light. He could see no other way. This thing that writhed inside, he couldn't remember when it had began, maybe its beginning was timeless, perhaps it was born in him, such darkness. It really didn't matter even at that, there was nothing to fill the hunger of the gaping mouth, nothing to satiate the appetite of the empty void, as much as he had achieved in his life it all seemed like nothing.

His emotions clogged his throat and nose and he found it near impossible to breathe. _When I pull the trigger will the speed of sound come faster than the speed of death? Will I hear the bang before the end or will it jut go black and dead, nothing left of my head but a curl of gun smoke? _

His lips pulled back from his teeth in a silent grimace at the pain that overwhelmed him. His other hand clutched at his chest as though his physical heart was actually breaking. _Regret, ifs, buts, would-haves, could-haves…I made my choices._

Matt barreled into the room and panicked when he saw his brother ready for suicide. Both of them started yelling, Matt in hysterical yelps and Jeff in incoherent jibberish. Hands fought for the small object and just as Matt thought he had control Jeff gripped harder.

_**If I could start again  
A million miles away**_

The sound tore through the dim evening raping it of its silence. Eyes in green and brown beheld each other in agony. _No, no! If I could do it over…oh God!_

_**I would keep myself  
I would find a way**_

One fell to the floor in blood, the other in tears.

**Don't scream at me please, I know it's extremely horrible and…horrible. I know the end is ambiguous it's supposed to be. I'm sorry I hope I didn't make people to mad? Reveiw? Flames are welcome I don't mind. Let me know what you think and please go read something light-hearted after this, lol. **


End file.
